Do conjoint/factorial/vignette experiments reflect choices in the real world?
Are hypothetical scenarios in the artificial survey context externally valid? Do hypothetical bias, intention-behavior gap and social desirability biases undermine validity?
Two cautionary studies on this question:
Happy to share our new paper in Comparative Migration Studies, with @hcebolla.bsky.social , @borchgrevink.bsky.social , and Inmaculada Serrano, within @equalstrength.bsky.social, where we show that #Radical-Right electoral gains increase anti-Muslim #HateCrime across Europe.
shorturl.at/UDGh9
Why do associations between grandparents & child health vary [Africa]?: "implication is that net flows of support from grandparents to children diminish as societies undergo demographic & epidemiological transitions, weakening the positive association between grandparent coresidence & child health"
New paper out in Population and Development Review:
We explore how the influence of grandparental co-residence on grandchildren’s nutrition varies across Africa’s diverse demographic and health contexts 👇
📄 doi.org/10.1111/padr...
"Sweeteners can harm cognitive health equivalent to 1.6 years of ageing, study finds"
Or does it? Let's take a look at this "study"...
www.theguardian.com/food/2025/se...
New blog post: The New Eugenics Companies
(Oops, I meant to say generational health and embryo selection)
Text from an FAQ in Okbay et al 20222: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41588-022-01016-z a similar same statement is made in an FAQ in 2025: https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.05.14.653986v1.supplementary-material Text reads: "The results of SSGAC studies have sometimes been used by online platforms, including some companies, to predict individual outcomes. We recognize that returning individual genomic “results” can be a fun way to engage people in research and other projects and to feed or stoke their interest in genomics. But it is important that participants/users understand that these individual results are not meaningful predictions and should be regarded essentially as entertainment. Failure to make this point clear risks sowing confusion and undermining trust in genetics research"
It is depressing, but all too predictable, how swiftly we’ve gone from the Social Science Genetic Association Consortium offering reassurances about the uses of behavioural polygenic scores to one of their lead authors marketing embryo selection for IQ
@alvaroszv.bsky.social y yo (IEGD-CSIC) de @csic.es hemos sacado una nota de nuestro trabajo en curso sobre la relación entre #cambioclimático y #emigración en #PiedrasdPapel utilizando datos sobre el calor extremo en #Senegal. www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepap...
Harvard sociologist/polisci Theda Skocpol explains how the vast expansion of ICE in BBB may be Trump's secret weapon to overcome the barriers of federalism and complete his autocratic takeover of the American state. (History from Germany & Hungary in 20s/30s.) talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/criti...
I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.
The first paper of my PhD—co-authored with @ishmamunoz.bsky.social and Alberto Palloni—is now out as a preprint!
👵👶 Grandparents’ investments matter for grandchildren’s human capital formation independently of parental investments —especially in Ethiopia and India.
📄 osf.io/preprints/os...
A big thank you to Dulce Manzano with whom I coauthored this paper on how returns to preschool evolved over the last century. Open access !
direct.mit.edu/euso/article... Tracing the evolution of preschool’s impact on education over a century: Spain, 1900-1973 | European Societies | MIT Press
Why has fertility suddenly crashed everywhere all at once?
Certainly, there are many factors, which vary across all world regions & over time.
I’ve written on many of these!
But we should also recognise the collapse of coupling.
Always open to new data & ideas! 🙂
Graph by @jburnmurdoch.ft.com
🚨 The end of an era for global health data — and a defining crossroads.
In Jan 2025, the DHS Program—the backbone of health & demographic data in 90+ countries—was terminated after US aid cuts of up to 84%.
Our researchers & global collaborators reflect on it in a recent pre-print🧵
I just published a new #Rstats notebook to celebrate the release of {marginaleffects} 📦 0.26.0:
Survival Analysis in R
Please send me feedback, and don't forget to update the pkg for important bug fixes.
Thanks to Robin Denz for his amazing work on this!
marginaleffects.com/bonus/surviv...
REPORTER: Amazon will soon display a number next to the price of each product that shows how much the Trump tariffs are adding. Isn't that a perfect demonstration that it's the American consumer who is paying for these policies?
LEAVITT: This is a hostile and political act by Amazon.
text table
Here's an update on sociology (and some demography) journal editorial polices with regard to sharing preprints before submission and after acceptance. A big improvement from the last edition of this table. With one exception.
Las universidades públicas de Madrid irán a la huelga el 28 de abril contra la nueva ley de Ayuso www.infolibre.es/politica/uni...
New paper out with @marespadafor.bsky.social: we study the intergenerational effects of Spain’s 1970 school reform and find that, despite major educational expansion, inequality persisted 📚📉
academic.oup.com/esr/advance-...
Our new study in Molecular Psychiatry, in 1528 children and their parents (@ntrbiopsy.bsky.social) shows that indirect genetic effects—where parental genetics shape offspring traits via environmental influences (genetic nurture)—impact DNA methylation of children. doi.org/10.1038/s413... (1/5)
🔎 Según @hcebolla.bsky.social del Dep. Población (CSIC): "El calor es malo para todos los niños, pero en hijos de madres migrantes el impacto es mayor. Esto parece deberse a la menor presencia de aire acondicionado en sus hogares, reflejando un efecto de la pobreza".
It's finally official and verified: The X user "Cremieux" is ID'd as a guy called Jordan Lasker. Lasker has been LARPing as an expert in genetics on X to promote racist pseudoscience. @sashagusevposts.bsky.social has been calling out his bullshit for ages
No, las niñas no son peores en ciencia. En el día de la mujer y la niña en la ciencia recuerdo este texto de 2018 en @piedrasdepapel.bsky.social sobre la interacción entre estereotipos, actitudes, expectativas, rendimiento y decisiones académicas y laborales: www.eldiario.es/piedrasdepap...
“Smoke’s Enduring Legacy: Bridging Early-Life Smoking Exposures & Later-Life Epigenetic Age Acceleration,” by Ramirez, Povedano, Garcia & Lund, uses the HRS (1992-2016) & VBS (2016) to investigate the complex relationship btw smoking/exposure & epigenetic aging. read.dukeupress.edu/demography/a...
list of banned keywords
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
I have a 99.8% snapshot of all zipped files from CDC Vital Statistics Online as of today. Documentation pdfs too. The one missing file was cut off part way 🤷♂️ will try again from time to time. Anyone needs anything reach out
Ah, so our students can't work with DHS right now, as (US-funded) DHS program is paused and not accepting registrations of new users 😶
